Rumor Mill Friday…

While cruising around the web I noticed a major trend in the stories posted about Apple today: none of these ‘announcements’ came from Apple.

Take for example, AppleInsider’s post of the obvious possibility that the PowerMac G5 replacement will have 2 CPU’s. “Apple and Intel somehow plan to wedge two high-end dual-core chips into some Mac Pros”.
First, several motherboard manufacturers, including Intel themselves, are certainly capable of making a board to support Apple’s needs. Why they choose to word it such that it is a technologically difficult challenge escapes me. Second, somehow the replacement systems is certainly named Mac Pro, even though no official announcement on that has happened. The rabbit hole gets deeper when MacRumors solidifies this ‘announcement’ by repeating the rumor (as they do all the time) like fact.
Then, somehow Apple will buy Nintendo because 1) Apple wants to dominate the consumer computer industry (which isn’t true – that is called a Monopoly which is illegal) and 2) Apple has the capital or credit power to purchase Nintendo if the companies agreed to do so. Then the rumor sites turn it into fact because, frankly, CNet has more credibility.

Here is the problem: CNet’s Crave isn’t reporting on fact, they are commenting on the idea of the companies either working together on a project or merging. While in concept this would be fantastic for the community, Apple and Nintendo certainly wouldn’t announce it until there was something to announce.

People forget that Apple doesn’t discuss internal projects publicly. If you look at the feature list dwindle from Vista, you can see why this strategy is good. As I did work for Apple at one time, I can tell you one thing about the culture there. 1) Speculation is Apple’s enemy – not Microsoft, not Sony, not anything else. 2) If it isn’t on Apple.com, it isn’t true. I think that Crave didn’t do a good job researching for his article, and it is disappointing to see on this Friday the rumor mill has churned out bad gouge based on conjecture alone. I realize in all of this discussion the rumor sites are what they are, and shouldn’t be taken seriously. Yet, Apple customers often discuss rumors as fact, thus damaging the company’s reputation when nothing was done wrong on their part.

Perhaps I’m out of line here, perhaps not. Maybe these things will prove true, but until any announcement is made hold on to your pennies.